We live in a time where the use of AI to create cultural works seems as repugnant as it is inevitable. Everywhere we turn we are presented with figures showing how many games are created using technology extensivelyhow they crowd out markets and the realization that seemingly every game, at some point generated an image or asked a machine for help.
Big Walk used AI in the ‘late part’ of development, sparking intense debate over rewards
“We support the work of those trying to limit the damage generative AI does to video games and our world, and we apologize that the use of Big Walk’s LLM does not meet their standards”
Despite the simple link to the Great walk drama, I don’t want to talk about this game here, because the manner of its use and the nature of its speech are not really the subject of this blog (which I had started taking notes for even before the IGF stuff happened). Instead, I want to talk about games that very clearly use AI-generated assets without disclosing them.
For all its shortcomings in scope and application, Steam has an AI disclosure policy, and after a rewrite of January 2026 it is very clear: If there is something in your game that is “player consumption”, such as visuals, sound, and writing, then you need to disclose it. There are many reasons for this: for example, there is legal uncertainty regarding the ownership and copyright status of AI-generated works, but above all there is the fact that a very large number of people just hate this shit and don’t want to see it in their video games.
Yet despite this policy, the number of games showing up on Steam – in my personal recommendations in particular – that obviously use a ton of AI-generated imagery and fail to disclose it is getting out of hand. As a gamer who plays a lot of strategy and management games, I feel particularly overwhelmed. I can’t count the number of times someone recommended a game to me over the past few months, installed it, started playing and only SO encountered just the most glaring slope. Napoleonic officers with pimples everywhere, space miners with piss filters and absurd goggles on their helmets, illustrations of cityscapes with buildings that morph into each other and can’t maintain their shape, it’s all nightmarish to see, none of it disclosed.
There is a deception here that is infuriating. If you’re using AI to generate content in your video game and you think it’s a useful tool that helps create a better game and is the future of development, why don’t you just mention it? Aren’t you proud of the cost reduction, time saving, visual and audio benefits it brings to your release? If you actively type words into the autocorrect machine with Delusions Of Grandeur to get “nice” loading screen images, then put them in the game waiting for players to lap them up, you should be happy to give credit where credit is due!
The answer of course is that these studios know it sucks, they know people hate it for many serious reasons and don’t want us to use it. They collectively hope that they can pass these things off and no one will notice, that they can have the cake and eat it too, receive all the applause and none of the blowback.
These disclosures are there precisely so that I can exercise my preferences as a consumer and not spend my time and money on projects that make deliberate and repeated use of technology that already has serious environmental, creative, societal, and economic consequences. And cognitive effects. To be pushed around despite everything, and to have to go through so many store pages and even the first hours of play just to find out if a studio was telling the truth or not, is exhaustingand places a burden on me that I don’t want or shouldn’t have to carry.
I’m getting really tired of not being able to believe that a video game doesn’t contain AI bullshit – Consequences
It’s a shame that players have to go through every asset and line of dialogue
Despite all the talk about the prevalence and inevitability of A.I., a large number of gamers I hate this shitwill make purchasing decisions based on this hatred and deserve to be fully informed. I’ve written twice now about the main games I enjoyed until I found AI elements in themnot because these relatively minor findings somehow changed my experience of the game itself, but because I don’t want to support that and don’t want to play games that used it.
For example, when it comes to my own shopping and playing habits, I think this kind of obfuscation is worse than just plain old AI slop games. Those at least you can see coming a mile away and can safely ignore. It’s the games that try to hide it, that go out of their way to deceive the market, that really annoy me.
While platforms could do more to help here (Valve enforcing its own AI guidelines would be a start), it’s ultimately a matter of trust. One where I, someone who does not wish to support the use of this technology with either my time or my money, should be able to make that choice fully and with all the information I need. Otherwise, I’m basically being lied to, and that sucks.
Gn tech
